Misconceptions of a Delusion, Shades of a Charade
Dawk Music Release #04

Designed as a celebration of the 35th Anniversary of the Chicago Seven trial, this nearly 80-minute slice of agitprop avant-garde is as much forward looking as backwards glancing.

Recorded live in Paris in early 2004, the narration voiced by disco poet Khari B. recalls the repressed radical anti-war and anti-racist sentiments of the late 1960s, which strike a responsive chord in an audience familiar with similar situations involving the Iraq War. At the same time, composer Ernest Dawkins, who directs but doesnt play in the 12-piece band, uses this expanded version of his usual quintet to show off some of Chicagos emerging improvising talents. Considering the AACM, with which all the musicians here are affiliated, was also established in the mid-1960s, the link seems appropriate and apt.

With 10 selections ranging from moderated New Thing lines and Free Jazz miasma to straight Swing, a quasi-Dixieland shuffle and backbeat R&B, the standout soloist is trumpeter Corey Wilkes. Now working with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, the brassman showcases clarion-calling open-horn work, plunger exhibitions and mouthpiece kisses with equal facility. Other memorable sounds come from the fat buttery textures of Norman Palm IIIs trombone; from alto saxophonist Greg Ward, whose tone can be half-Hodges and half-Dolphy; from sonorous baritone sax explorer Aaron Getsug, who makes sophisticated use of altissimo alarums; and from pianist Justin Dillard, whose cross-handed dynamics relate to Chicagos blues, gospel and boogie-woogie history, though he comps as sympathetically as any mainstreamer..

Driven by twin percussion from Dawkins regular bandmate Isaiah Spencer plus the inventiveness of peripatetic Hamid Drake, the CD is probably Dawkins most realized project. Only at the very end is it weakened by some show-biz flourishes from the singer during the encores the crowd demands after completion of the suite.